Alexander Hernandez was reminded of his first UFC loss each morning he woke up and felt the bumps and bruises across his face.

He had a broken nose, a broken occipital bone and a broken rib stemming from a second-round TKO at the hands of Donald Cerrone in January. Hernandez said his eyes struggled to process the sun, and he fell into a brief period of drinking and not eating right.

The No. 13 lightweight in the world at 26 years old, Hernandez hadn’t lost a fight in more than five years, last dropping a split decision at a Hero FC event in June 2013.

He wrestled at Reagan, earned a degree in business finance at UTSA and worked as a mortgage loan officer for three and a half years before quitting last January to pursue MMA full time. He won his UFC debut in 42 seconds, knocking out Beneil Dariush at UFC 222 on March 3, 2018, in Las Vegas.

Cerrone pulled Hernandez back down to earth.

“It really does kind of send you in a depression for a bit,” Hernandez said. “Every day, it was just like a bad dream for that first week. It was a hard, hard thing to stomach.”

The day after the loss, Hernandez posted to Instagram a picture of himself wearing a suit and sunglasses, with red marks evident across his face. He vowed to change his approach, determined to be prepared for drawn-out fights rather than first-round executions.

Six months to the day after his post, Hernandez plans to step into the Octagon with a new mindset when he faces Francisco Trinaldo during the UFC Fight Night event July 20 at the AT&T Center.

“In this last fight, I certainly underestimated the durability of my opponent’s mind and body,” Hernandez said. “I don’t even think Cerrone beat me. I beat myself. Really, he was just a manifestation of my faltering composition.”

Hernandez landed a few early shots against Cerrone but started to lose control of the fight midway through the opening round. Coach John O’Rourke said Cerrone turned to his muay thai experience, and Hernandez didn’t adjust.

By the end of the first round, blood was streaking down Hernandez’s face. In the second, Cerrone landed a head kick and finished the fight with a flurry of punches.

“We got the jump on him quick, and now we needed to shift gears, come back and make the old man come to us,” coach Jason Yerrington said. “We weren’t able to do that, because when Alex got clipped, he felt the pressure mounting to keep on going. That’s a horrible pace to keep for 15 straight minutes with one of the best in the world.”

As he was being examined by doctors and transported to the hospital in an ambulance, Hernandez was analyzing the fight. He talked with his father about what went wrong and what he could’ve done differently while the doctors gave him stitches. He felt he was better than Cerrone in every way, save one obvious difference: experience.

Hernandez is 10-2 and 2-1 in the UFC. The 36-year-old Cerrone is 36-12-1, and his 23 UFC wins are the most in the history of the promotion.

When Hernandez started to take hits, he said he reacted anxiously, losing sight of technique.

“I had a bad habit of forcing things, just because my expectations are so high of myself,” Hernandez said. “If I would’ve let Cerrone suffer through those first heavy shots, that whole fight could’ve unraveled differently. But I forced it. I thought, ‘I have to take him out.’ So patience and poise have been the name of the game.”

Hernandez said the loss was a necessary learning experience — something that was bound to happen with his all-out approach to fights.

His coaches have built reset periods into his workouts and sparring sessions rather than letting him launch an unyielding blitz. He’s working to let go of the pressure of living up to his debut.

“Now, he’s using his training partners as just that: training partners,” O’Rourke said. “Getting better at specific things, rather than the bell rings, I rip you up, and move on. He’s learning to win fights rather than beat people up.”

Much of Hernandez’s strength and conditioning work takes place in the Comal and Guadalupe Rivers in New Braunfels, where Hernandez lives.

Yerrington said training outdoors helps Hernandez live completely in the moment. Strength and conditioning coach Jason Kilgore will have Hernandez swim all two and a half miles of the Comal, including some of the areas with stronger currents regularly used for tubing.

“You get tossed around quite a bit if you don’t know what you’re doing in this whitewater-type setting,” Kilgore said. “It’s more of a warrior’s path. We put ourselves in some precarious situations, man. The idea is we’re going to get in here, and we’re going to relax, and there’s going to be a little bit of a struggle, and we’re going to have to find our way out.”

Kilgore said he has a degree in exercise physiology, but he favors techniques many would consider unorthodox.

He likes to structure Hernandez’s training sessions based on his mental state, working harder or lighter depending on his attitude and energy.

Kilgore will walk on Hernandez’s back — “A ridiculous form of massage therapy,” Kilgore said — to try to help him relax. They practice a Russian martial art known as Systema, emphasizing yielding to pressures with minimal anticipation.

Ice baths are a regular part of the routine. If Hernandez can maintain his breathing and keep composure under the stress of the cold, he’ll be able to do so in the octagon, Kilgore maintains.

Kilgore also focuses heavily on breathing, sometimes using a system designed by extreme athlete Wim Hof that is meant to create a surge of adrenaline by bringing more oxygen into the body. Hof has broken numerous endurance records using the system, and a group of test subjects using his method were able to strengthen their immune system and clear toxins from their body.

“Kilgore is a big part of Alex being able to practice how not to become anxious in a fight when things don’t go your way,” Yerrington said. “You don’t have to just keep on going harder, faster, stronger. Sit back, analyze, survey and go back to the plan.”

Trinaldo, age 40, is 23-6 and has fought in UFC since 2012, presenting Hernandez with another mismatch in experience. Of UFC’s top 15 lightweights, Hernandez is the youngest. Only three others are under 30.

Hernandez said he has “rewired my entire mindset” since the loss to Cerrone. He feels ready to bridge the experience gap.

“I feel like the timeline has worked out just right with the roller coaster ride that I was on since January,” Hernandez said. “I've been busy, and I've been overcoming different trials and tribulations, and I think it’s all kind of culminated to July 20 to be the perfect date for me to make my statement.”

Greg Luca is the UTSA beat reporter and general assignment reporter for the San Antonio Express-News. In addition to UTSA, his coverage includes the University of Incarnate Word, the San Antonio Missions, the San Antonio Rampage and other San Antonio area colleges. He is a 2013 graduate of the University of Florida and a native of Connecticut. He was the sports editor of the McAllen Monitor from 2014-18.